Y'know, I cant help but feel sorry for cEvin Key. Now
don't get me wrong, he's a talented guy, and I'm sure he's
got quite a few years of good music ahead of him. But it
seems that no matter what he does, he's always going to have
the rotting, fetid carcass of Skinny Puppy hanging around his
neck.

It's understandable, I suppose, given the
enormous popularity, influence and obsessive following that
Puppy enjoyed. And it's not as if Key is disowning his past,
even despite the band's nasty break-up and ill-received
final album, The Process. But still, many fans
(especially the younger ones who never had the chance to
witness Skinny Puppy in all their gory glory) seem to have
difficulty accepting the very simple fact that Download - the
project that Key and friends founded during SP's death throes
in 1995 - is NOT Skinny Puppy Vesion 2.0.

Perhaps
III will be the album that drives the point home.
Named not only for the fact that it is the band's third
release (assuming you don't count a pair of EPs and one
limited edition album), but also because the departure of
co-founder Mark Spybey has stripped the project down to a
trio of Key, Phil "Philth" Western, and Anthony Valcic,
III is Download's least Puppy-like effort by far. In
my eyes (and ears), there are three (or if you prefer,
III) reasons for this - the lack of Spybey's vocals,
which were often processed to the point of being similar to
those of SP's Ogre; the absence of Dwayne Goettel, Key's
longtime writing partner who died before the first Download
album was even released, but who appeared on all discs before
III via material recorded before his death; and the
increased involvement of Western in the collective's creative
process.

In fact, if comparisons must be drawn,
III has more in common with Western's other projects,
such as Off & Gone, and Download's minimal techno alter ego
pLATEAU than it does with any old Puppy droppings. The
influence of the minimalist sounds of Germany's Basic Channel
and Chain Reaction labels is also quite obvious throughout,
as well as the clanky, experimental electronica of Autechre
and their Skam Records cohorts. In genre terms, Download has
moved farther from the industrial side of the field and are
proceeding ever closer to the techno end zone.

Remaining from his earlier work, however, are Key's
brooding ambient soundscapes, giving the material a dense and
lush undercurrent that works in perfect harmony with the
minimal beats that lay on top of the mix. The track Beauty
In The Eyes is a great example of this juxtaposition:
starting with a fragile, Aphex-style melody, and a crunchy
beat floating around the edges, it moves into a stark
centrepiece of ambience featuring a mournful cello, and then
suddenly degenerates into a wall of static driven madness
before fading into the next track. Even through all the
stylistic dips and turns, it never seems to lose its focus or
direction, a flaw that infiltrated some of Download's earlier
material.

So, will this album be enough to lay that
damned dog to rest once and for all? Let's hope so. In the
meantime, try your best to forget the past, and just focus on
the here and now. If you can manage it, you'll find yourself
rewarded with a solid and inspired work that further blurs
the lines between techno, experimental and industrial
music.